This article is from page 15 of the 2011-09-06 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 15 JPG
AIR QUALITY issues have emerged yet again in Shannon, according to local residents in the town.
The town has been plagued by concerns over unsavoury smells emanating in recent years. In March of this year, the Environmental Protection Agency put monitoring measures in place and recorded a result of ‘good’ at the time. This was upgraded to the top possible result of ‘very good’ last month, and the latest figures are set to be made available later this week.
The EPA’s mobile laboratory, which is located in the town, actively analy ses the quality of air in the town and surrounding areas. This is part of a comprehensive assessment of air quality in all major cities and towns in Ireland.
However, Fine Gael Senator Tony Mulcahy, who first brought the issue to the public’s attention several years ago, said that there have been several complaints in recent weeks over odours. “We have a very bad sewage smell and an unsavoury pungent odour. I have had complaints from Smithstown and the lower half of the town; Ballycasey and Tullyvarraga. I am getting a very bad sewage smell myself,” said Mr Mulcahy, who lives in the town. “I am getting complaints about a pungent odour at weekends. A few people have rang me with the same thing,” he said.
“If it is a sewage issue we need it cleaned up as soon as possible. We need it identified,” he said. “Up until now there hasn’t been an issue but in the last two weeks there has been a smell. We had a similar issue last year. It is something we need to resolve. We need to establish where they are coming from,” said Mr Mulcahy.
When the EPA announced the measure in March, it indicated that the initiative would continue for up to a year. The assessment was started, on foot of requests from local town councillors. This assessment is done via a trailer which is located at the rear of the civic offices in Shannon. Analysers are contained in the trailer and these are read on a regular basis.
In addition to the trailers that are moved from one location to another, there is also a fixed network whereby a number of sites nationwide are monitored on a continuous basis. One of those sites is Ennis. Concentrations of oxides of nitrogen, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and benzene and toluene are being measured. The index is based on four parameters – sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone and particulate matter.
According to data from the EPA, there was one exceedance of particulate matter to-date this year.